“We have paid the entire purchase price – €13.98 million was paid on Friday,” Mr Pejovic said at the press conference.
As he said, in two or three months, which is needed to complete the necessary procedures, the KAP will officially have the new owner who has big plans.
“We have increased production capacity from 3,200 tonnes to 4,000 tonnes and prepared dynamics for the future KAP development. The processing that would take place in the future is the processing of alloys, aluminium sheets and logs,” he said.
As Pejovic’s main reason for postponing payments were unfinished court cases, the journalists wanted to know why he decided to pay the rest of the money when nothing was changed.
“The main case was launched by the CEAC company in Nicosia. The legal team that is familiar with the issue actually advised me to freely deposit funds in regard to that matter, so I did it with their guarantees,” Mr Pejovic explained.
If all this was realised, with opening new units new workers would be employed – about 450 of them, in addition to over 500 employees currently engaged.
“The 550 workers are staying in the company. With development of new units, more workers will be needed. But it takes time to open new units, to provide new equipment and install it. In a year or two, if we open the unit for producing billets, only there we will need 150 new workers, for the production of alloys 100 workers, for the production of aluminium sheets we will need circa 200 workers,” he added.
According to him, the plans implementation depends on the crucial negotiations with the Electric Power Company of Montenegro (EPCG).
“I think that the KAP pays the highest electricity price in the world. Since 2014, ‘Uniprom’ has paid €37 million for power supply and the price of aluminium is €1,500”, he said.
Mr Pejovic added that the EPCG had two suggestions, first – to allow 10% discount to the KAP as it does all regular payers which was rejected and the second – to form the electricity price in accordance with the market price of aluminium, which is still considered by the EPCG:
“It should not be allowed to the EPCG to be an obstacle for the further development of the KAP. After the summer holidays, we will have serious negotiations with them because we have to agree how to continue the cooperation. For we must not allow the KAP to accumulate losses while the EPCG is looking only to their own interests,” he said.
Mr Pejovic stressed they would not seek electricity outside Montenegro because they did not want to pump the money out of Montenegro.
He did not want to reveal details about business results of the KAP in 2014, saying that it was a trade secret.
Asked if the results were positive, Mr Pejovic said he did not operate with negative results.
Mr Pejovic provided the money that was paid for purchasing the KAP solely through business and revenues of ‘Uniprom’. He explained that, contrary to previous owners, the KAP was trying to cooperate with local companies, so it was currently working with 110 Montenegrin companies.
